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editorial
. 2013 May 30;4:314. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00314

Table 1.

Possible signs and symptoms of some cognitive impairments, detectable with the preliminary Neuropsychological Examination (NPE).

Cognitive domain Neuropsychological disorder Signs and symptoms
Attention Selective attention impairments Internal and external distractibility, attentive captures.
Vigilance-sustained attention impairments Drowsiness, attentive fluctuations.
Memory Anterograde amnesia Oblivion of recent information, perseveration in discourse.
Retrograde amnesia Oblivion of past information on recalling autobiographical data, job information, and the medical history.
Pre-frontal functions Dysexecutive disorders Poor or diminished insight, lack of the theme of discourse, perseveration of speech or action components, simplified or confused mental tracking or reasoning.
Adynamic syndrome Reduction of verbal or behavioral initiative, mutism, lack of spontaneity, diminished empathy.
Dysinhibited behavior Iperorality, jocularity, social inappropriateness, hyperactivity, diminished emotional control.
Speech and language Aphasia Dysfluency Effortful articulation, speech lacking of normal prosodic variations, reduced speech output.
Phonemic deficit Phonemic paraphasia, conduites d'approche.
Syntactic deficit Simplified syntactic clauses, telegraphic speech output, omission/substitution morphological endings.
Lexical-semantic deficit Word-finding problems, circumlocutions, semantic paraphasia.
Comprehension deficit Answers are inconsistent with questions, necessity to repeat a same question in absence of hearing loss.
Visuospatial abilities Topographical disorientation Impaired orientation in hospital unit.
Neglect Motor Patient does not utilize a limb, which adopts a passive, anomalous posture.
Personal Lateralized dressing apraxia: e.g., arm of patient's glasses are misplaced upon one of his ears.
Extrapersonal Head and eyes exploration movements are limited, shortened or defective toward a region of space, patient does not answer questions when prompted from a side of his space.
Other cognitive functions Optic ataxia Misreaching errors trying to grasp objects on the table.
Gaze apraxia Abnormal eye and head movements during attempted changes in gaze, fixed gaze, etc.
Alien hand syndrome Anomalous posture of arms, levitation, intermanual conflict.
Ambient dependence syndrome Echopraxis, echolalia, imitation behavior, utilization behavior.
Frontal memory disorders Confabulations, interference, errors concerning the source of the memories.